Where There's a Will, There's a Tiny Pair of Scissors Waiting to be Found

We often get comments from extended family about how self-sufficient Coco is. We always give her Montessori school credit for that, but over the weekend, I was kind of regretting her self-reliance...

Coco didn’t want to nap on Saturday because my parents were here. After giving it a good try for an hour, we let her get up. My mom and Zuzu were coloring in the kitchen, David and I were in the living room (watching the new season of Survivor), and my dad was working in the basement. And each of us assumed another adult had eyes on Coco. Seriously, I thought she was coloring with my mom.

But then my mom came in the living room and asked me where Coco was. It didn't take long for us to realize that NO ONE KNEW. So we started the search. We assumed she’d fallen asleep somewhere, but after a quick search of the house, she hadn’t turned up under any covers or in any quiet corners. 

I started to feel panicky as we extended the search outside. Thankfully it was only a few minutes before my dad found her in the garage.

He carried her out and I was so relieved to see her. She was snuggled up against him with her head on his shoulder, and I walked over and I patted her on the head. When I pulled back my hand, though, I brought away a handful of hair.

Yes. She’d cut her hair AGAIN. But HOW WAS THIS POSSIBLE? We had been so vigilant about keeping scissors out of the way! When I trimmed Zuzu's bangs that morning, I’d been sure to put the scissors up and away in the high bathroom cabinet. How had Coco gotten her hands on scissors???

I returned to the garage and began to piece together the series of events, crime-scene-investigator style. 

Coco can open the back door of my car by standing on the hub cap and throwing her whole body weight backwards. She then clings to the door handle and hangs from it while the door swings open. It is quite a trick.  She had apparently done this and climbed in the backseat of the car, and over to the front seat. I guess she dug around on the floor a bit and located a first aid kit under the passenger seat. And then it only took moments for her to unzip the first aid kit and dig around inside, whereupon she located a little pair of scissors, which I can only guess were intended to cut bandages. 

After locating the scissors, she proceeded to take off her dress (not sure why? Maybe because I usually have them strip down when I'm trimming their hair?). Then she hacked at her bangs (what little of them existed since her last hack job) and the sides of her hair (which had juuuuust started to grow out). So now we have a new set of bald patches and a completely jagged hairline in front, cut down to the scalp in places.

Would you believe we had a photographer coming over for family photos two hours later? Not even kidding. I texted our photographer and she said that she'd try to do some creative angles. Anything that doesn't highlight the patches of scalp peeking through on the sides would be ideal...

I haven't even tried to even it out because it's kind of a lost cause at this point. The front actually doesn't look too much worse than it did (considering we were already working with uneven bangs from the last cut), but the back now puffs out in the middle like a kind of bizarre mohawk/rat tail/mullet wannabe. I'm leaving it for now and might try to see if my cousin who cuts hair can salvage something from it when we're home at Christmas time. It's funny how quickly you get used to something, because on Sunday when one of our neighbors was like, "So... did Coco... get a haircut?" it was like I was suddenly seeing her with fresh eyes and realizing all over again how terrible her hair looks! 

What are you lookin' at?

Good thing I'm still cute.